The notion that we live in someone else’s video game is irresistible to many. Searching the term “simulation hypothesis” (模拟假说) returns numerous results that debate whether the universe is a computer simulation — a concept that some scientists actually take seriously. Unfortunately, this is not a scientific question. We will probably never know whether it’s true. We can, instead, use this idea to advance scientific knowledge.

The 18th-century philosopher Kant argued that the universe ultimately consists of things-in-themselves that are unknowable. While he held the notion that objective reality exists, he said our mind plays a necessary role in structuring and shaping our perceptions. Modern sciences have revealed that our perceptual experience of the world is the result of many stages of processing by sensory systems and cognitive (认知的) functions in the brain. No one knows exactly what happens within this black box. If empirical (实证的) experience fails to reveal reality, reasoning won’t reveal reality either since it relies on concepts and words that are contingent on our social, cultural and psychological histories. Again, a black box.

So, if we accept that the universe is unknowable, we also accept we will never know if we live in a computer simulation. And then, we can shift our inquiry from “Is the universe a computer simulation?” to “Can we model the universe as a computer simulation? ” Modelling reality is what we do. To facilitate our comprehension of the world, we build models based on conceptual metaphors (隐喻) that are familiar to us. In Newton’s era, we imagined the universe as a clock. In Einstein’s, we uncovered the standard model of particle (粒子) physics.

Now that we are in the information age, we have new concepts such as the computer, information processing, virtual reality, and simulation. Unsurprisingly, these new concepts inspire us to build new models of the universe. Models are not the reality, however. There is no point in arguing if the universe is a clock, a set of particles or an output of computation. All these models are tools to deal with the unknown and to make discoveries. And the more tools we have, the more effective and insightful we can become.

It can be imagined that comparable to the process of building previous scientific models, developing the “computer simulation” metaphor-based model will also be a hugely rewarding exercise.